Regardless of who prevails in Tuesday's midterm elections, one group of Americans will definitely lack representation in Congress: all the U.S. citizens who live in Puerto Rico.

More than 3.6 million Americans in Puerto Rico observe all U.S. laws but lack full representation in Congress or the right to vote for president. Hurricane Maria drove home the injustice of that predicament last fall when Puerto Ricans were forced to beg elected officials from other states for recovery funds after the storm crippled our island.

That is why it is finally time for Congress to correct this historic inequity by granting statehood to Puerto Rico. We learned the hard way in 2016 that Congress could take enormous power away from Puerto Ricans when they gave an unelected oversight board blanket authority to override local elected officials. If Congress can wield outsize power over our island, we deserve a greater say in Congress.

For some incredulous folks, this might seem like a stretch in the current political environment, but the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation as recently as 2010 to start the statehood process. Legislation is pending before Congress to make Puerto Rico a state by 2021 with full voting rights, following the 2017 plebiscite in which 97 percent of the Puerto Ricans who voted (23 percent of registered voters) cast ballots backing statehood. This came after the 2012 referendum in which almost 80 percent of registered Puerto Rican voters participated and 61 percent supported statehood.

Critics have argued that the 51st state would shift the balance of power in Congress, adding two senators and as many as five House members. But Puerto Ricans are not a monolithic voting bloc beholden to a single party. Our population is diverse, so we would immediately become the next swing state. In fact, the one thing that unites conservatives and progressives on the island is the need to achieve statehood. As evidence, our Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon is a Republican, and I am a Democrat.

We only get a vote in the mainland?

The absurdity of our plight was recently on display at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The commission gathered to discuss whether the United States is violating international law by depriving Puerto Ricans the right to vote in federal elections. The U.S representative to the commission, Carlos Trujillo, delivered a shameful defense of the status quo when he argued that Puerto Ricans could all win the right to vote — by moving to the mainland USA.

Really?

The federal government concedes that Puerto Ricans have the right to vote — as long as they don’t cast those votes in Puerto Rico. Since when does geography impact citizenship? Last I checked, Americans who live in other countries still have the right to vote in federal elections. But federal laws suggest that this right does not apply on the island of Puerto Rico. It's the perfect example of why Puerto Rico is a geopolitical black hole where normal rules don’t apply.

The right to vote and to participate in government, the right to equality before the law, the right to be recognized as people worthy of civil rights — these are the issues the commission was considering, and these are the issues the U.S. government deplorably disregarded.

As the whole world saw last year when Maria hit us, the right to vote and to participate in the government that enacts and enforces the laws applicable to our island truly became a matter of life and death. Nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens died in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the storm.

Though it could take months before the commission releases its findings, as a proud American, I know that one day Puerto Rico will be an equal member of our union. The fact remains that almost every U.S. territory that has gone down the political path to statehood has eventually been welcomed.

That is why American elected officials need to understand one thing: Either you are with equality, full democratic rights and only one citizenship, or you are against it. Either you stand up with us in this fight for what is right, or you shut up and retreat to the corner with those who support discrimination against their own brethren. The era of two-tiered citizenship must end now.

The arc of history bends towards justice. And when it gets there, we will look back and ask ourselves why we put 3.6 million U.S. citizens through the trauma of proving, at every turn, that they should be treated equally as Americans and as human beings.

Ricardo Rosselló is the governor of Puerto Rico. You can follow him on Twitter: @ricardorossello.